FP's experiments discussion

You made that up. There are no "known bugs" in any major experiment by Fleischmann, McKubre, Miles or anyone else. You claim you found errors, but when I and others point out your mistakes, you do a vanishing act. You refuse to address the points listed by the authors. Let me repeat the points from the Fleischmann boil off tests that you have never addressed, even though you claim you found problems in it:

1. A heat balance of zero in several different calibrations.

No surprise. In the F&P method, the calibrations are done to calculate the global heat transfer coefficient k, so the heat balance should be zero by definition in ALL the different calibrations.

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2. All of the salts left in the cell.

FWIK, this issue was addressed only in the response to Morrison (1), where Fleischmann wrote that they recovered about the 95% of the residual lithium deuteroxide in their earlier work. But, for these early works, F&P also wrote in one of their first article (2) that they "adopted a policy of discontinuing the experiments (or, at least, of reducing the current density) when the boiling point is reached." So they didn't check the inventory of the salt left in the cell after the boiling tests described in their "major paper" presented in 1992 at ICCF3 (3).

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3. Boiling with no input power, much longer and hotter than in the calibrations.

Not true (4).

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4. Boiling with Pd-D2O only, and not with Pt, H2O or a resistance heater. …

Hansen reported that F&P reached boiling conditions with Pt cathode, as shown in Figure 1 and seg. of the paper he presented at ICCF2 (5).

This behavior was implicitly confirmed by the experiments carried out by Lonchampt, as reported by Biberian in the paper he presented in 2007 (6): "We measured (see table 1) at boiling temperature excess heat up to 29 %, in qualitative agreement with Fleischmann and Pons. However, the magnitude of the excess heat that we measured was less important than what they observed. Their analysis of the boiling off in two periods, assuming that the vast majority of the excess heat was produced at the end of the experiment was difficult to evaluate. The experiments in Li2SO4 are surprising since they seem to show that the palladium is active, and that even platinum is active."

Evidently, they apparently got excess heat at boiling condition also using Pt cathodes.

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... How can the choice of metal or water affect cause the "droplet" theory to work? How can the source of heat do this?

Biberian was surprised that a Pt cathode could be as active as Pd one. A far less surprising conclusion is that neither Pt, nor Pd are active, and that the apparent excess heat resulted from a wrong way of calculating the output heat, that erroneously neglects the droplets entrained in the gas stream.

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5. Melted plastic when the calibration leaves the plastic underwater.

Plastic has a low melting point. In the final stage of the boiling off of the electrolyte, the residual water is in form of foam, which has a much lower heat transfer coefficient.

Anyway, if that phenomenon was to be deemed so important, it would have to be adequately documented with many detailed photographs of the damaged component.

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6. Excess heat a week before the boiling, and for up to a day after it. Why did it stop for 10 minutes only?

Reference?

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7. Boiling on the cathode only.

Obviously! The cathode surface is much less than the anode one, so the specific current is much higher at cathode surface.

Furthermore, the cathode surface is vertical, so that the upper part is in contact with a warmer coolant and in the final boiling stage can easily reach and exceed the boiling temperature. On the contrary the thin and long wire that constitutes the anode is essentially horizontal and is easily cooled by the surrounding water.

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8. Droplets so small they cannot be detected, yet so large they produce a gigantic error, making 30 W look like 150 W.

This is nothing but the gigantic error that has been committed throughout the entire CF/LENR story, from F&P experiments to Ecat tests.

In boiling conditions, an apparent excess heat of 5 times the input power means that the mass of water leaving the cell as liquid droplets is 5 times the mass of water that leaves the cell as gas (or dry vapor). Considering that the specific volume of dry steam is about 1650 times the specific volume of liquid, it is sufficient that the volume of droplets is 1/330 of the volume of the gas stream. It is not so easy to be detected by eye.

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9. Impossible physical theories that violate 18th and 19th century laws of physics, yet -- by some miracle -- produce exactly the same results as conventional theories, so that there is no test that can distinguish which is right, and no way to falsify the new theories. The conventional theories prove there is excess heat; the impossible theories rely on things like droplets too small to measure that leave no physical, measurable trace, yet magically remove most of the water. This is pathological science.

Pathological is to ignore the warnings on the calculations of output heat at boiling conditions that have been raised even at ICCFs by CF people:

I agree with Ascoli65
detailed points in #7312 (I think all of them, and I've made most myself elsewhere) and so will not repeat them. And this is not the thread for that discussion, which in any case we have had before. My "going away" is because when both sides have made their points restating them ad infinitum is not helpful.

I agree with Ascoli65detailed points in #7312 (I think all of them, and I've made most myself elsewhere)

All of his statements are factually wrong. If you read the literature, you will see that. You could easily confirm that everything he says is nonsense or contrary to the facts, yet evidently you believe it. You are very gullible.

All of his statements are factually wrong. If you read the literature, you will see that. You could easily confirm that everything he says is nonsense or contrary to the facts, yet evidently you believe it. You are very gullible.

OR,

Is it possible that you simply believe what you have read because it aligns with your current belief system?

Is it possible that you simply believe what you have read because it aligns with your current belief system?

Just asking

Let me explain in more detail. THHuxley has been given two sources of information:

1. Peer-reviewed papers in mainstream journals written by distinguished experts. Claims that have been independently replicated. Methods grounded in rock-solid 18th and 19th century physics, such as the heat of vaporization of water, or methods of ensuring that a chemical retort is working correctly. In many cases the proof of the claims can be seen with the naked eye, in the videos. For example, you can see that the input power is insufficient to boil the water, and you can see that only the cathode is hot, which means the boiling cannot be from input electricity. THH does not need to take anyone's word for these things. He can also boil salted water himself in a test tube to confirm other aspects of it.

2. Comments by an anonymous internet troll that range from physically impossible blather to outright denial of facts that were well established by 1790.

THH believes the latter. This shows an appalling lack of judgement. His credibility is zero.

2. Comments by an anonymous internet troll that range from physically impossible blather to outright denial of facts that were well established by 1790.

A fact that were well established at those times was that steam engines had problems with liquid droplets mixed with steam. These problems became particularly severe with the diffusion of steam locomotives, and was solved by Stephenson with the invention of the "steam dome" which "acts as a simple steam separatot and minimises the risk that water will be carried over to the cylinders" (1).

This is 18th and 19th century physics, not rocket science (*), but CF people seem to have discovered it only in 2011 (2), and some of them still deny the huge effects of this well-known phenomenon on the calorimetry of the CF devices.

(*) Well, actually the first Stephenson's locomotive with a steam dome was the "Rocket", but it worked for real.

Let me explain in more detail. THHuxley has been given two sources of information:

1. Peer-reviewed papers in mainstream journals written by distinguished experts. Claims that have been independently replicated. Methods grounded in rock-solid 18th and 19th century physics, such as the heat of vaporization of water, or methods of ensuring that a chemical retort is working correctly. In many cases the proof of the claims can be seen with the naked eye, in the videos. For example, you can see that the input power is insufficient to boil the water, and you can see that only the cathode is hot, which means the boiling cannot be from input electricity. THH does not need to take anyone's word for these things. He can also boil salted water himself in a test tube to confirm other aspects of it.

2. Comments by an anonymous internet troll that range from physically impossible blather to outright denial of facts that were well established by 1790.

THH believes the latter. This shows an appalling lack of judgement. His credibility is zero.

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Jed, my credibility will be what it is.

For readers here, I'll give a summary of why the key paper often cites does not convince me as it does Jed. Many may find the detailed references here useful, so they can decide for themselves. it is hard work, but interesting.

No internet troll here! And peer reviewed arguments on both sides of the issue, arguing different things.

The first point is that scientists with peer-reviewed arguments are therefore sometimes wrong. Morrison and Fleischmann et al differ markedly, they cannot both be right.

The second point is that reading a sequence like this: original, reply, reply to reply is very informative. Each document, read on its own, seems convincing to somone not expert. However, by comparing the arguments in the documents one can see which points are answered, which ignored, which evaded. You need enough math to follow the equations, first year university physics or maths would do. You need enough general knowledge to follow the arguments and then do additional research where needed.

Have fun!

THH

PS - Shanahan is a published scientist, whose views (on that merit) should be considered as potentially valuable. Calling him an internet troll may or may not be accurate, but does not do justice to his historic (peer-reviewed published) addition to this debate. Shanahan's views are however well after the interchanges above. it is worth fully reading the original material, and then considering Shanahan's contribution.

PPS - I realise I've laid out the source material on which I base my current views, but not given the views! Maybe later...

PPPS - it is somewhat ironic Jed quoting mainstream distinguished scientist status and peer-reviewed journals, as a positive. I'd agree with him, though set less store by it than he does. But the LENR field as a whole claim that mainstream science has bad judgement and cannot be trusted. Specifically that the mainstream view of LENR, held by very many distinguished scientists, is wrong.

PPPS - it is somewhat ironic Jed quoting mainstream distinguished scientist status and peer-reviewed journals, as a positive. I'd agree with him, though set less store by it than he does.

It is not a bit ironic. I think that a peer-reviewed paper published in a mainstream journal by a world class expert that sticks to the laws of physics has more credibility than a claim by an anonymous internet troll that violates 18th and 19th century physics. THH disagrees.

But the LENR field as a whole claim that mainstream science has bad judgement and cannot be trusted. Specifically that the mainstream view of LENR, held by very many distinguished scientists, is wrong.

The distinguished mainstream scientists who say that cold fusion is wrong know nothing about it. I have spoken with them, and read their comments. They have no idea what instruments are used, what has been observed, or what conclusions have been drawn. Therefore, they are not acting as scientists and their views are worthless.

Your views do not violate 18th and 19th century physics. They violate the last 600,000 years of common sense; i.e. things that everyone has known since the discovery of fire and cooking. Such as the fact that that a hot object cools in less than 3 days, and that a bucket of water left in ordinary conditions does not evaporate overnight.

The distinguished mainstream scientists who say that cold fusion is wrong know nothing about it. I have spoken with them, and read their comments. They have no idea what instruments are used, what has been observed, or what conclusions have been drawn. Therefore, they are not acting as scientists and their views are worthless.

Misinterpretation of dry-out timing and mechanism of the 4-cell Boil-off experiment

A simple cross checking of the public information available on the more meaningful F&P work, the 4-cells boil-off tests described at ICCF3 in 1992 (1), reveals a big error in the timing of the boil-off phases, which entails a wrong interpretation of the dry-out mechanism, which in turns is at the basis of the overestimation of the heat output and consequently of the claiming of the existence of a nuclear phenomenon capable of providing the excess heat required to fulfill the energy balance.

This mismatch is due to the different modes used to record and indicate the time in the experimental data. The numeric data have been recorded in function of an elapsed time, which started from the beginning (00.00.00) of Saturday, April 11, 1992. This is the time value reported in seconds on the t-axis of the diagrams. On the contrary, the video frames of the video recorded during the whole experiment (which lasted almost one month) report the time in HH.MM.SS.

The ICCF3 paper contains many diagrams and 4 video frames. The diagrams mostly refer to the evolution of the cell 2, while no video frame refers to this cell. However, a shorter version of the recorded video, containing a collection of few clips referring to the topic moments of the test, was published by Krivit in 2009 (2), and it also includes 2 clips referring to the boil-off period of cell 2:

After having converted their day times into elapsed times, these 2 video clips can be positioned onto the diagram of Figure 8, which shows the evolution of the temperature along the day before the cell 2 boil-off. This merging is shown in the following jpeg.

The 2 video clips lie respectively more than 3 hours before and about 2 hours after the moment at about 1646000 s of elapsed time in which F&P positioned the dry-out stage. These mismatches rise severe concerns on the correctness of the boil-off and dry-out timing and mechanism assumed by F&P, in particular:

A – F&P stated that the last half of the cell water contents vaporized in about 10 minutes during the last stage of the boil-off phase of each cell. At page 16 of their paper (1), they calculated in 182 W (11+171 W) the averaged total output generated inside the cell 2 in this short period, and concluded that 144.5 W were in excess with respect to the 37.5 W of input power. This timing was based on the analysis of the frames of the video recorded during the test. In particular for the cell 2 they derived the half dry and the full dry instants on the basis of the second clip. However, the period of the video recording considered does not coincide with the peak of cell voltage, that they deem to trigger the "positive feedbeck" of the nuclear phenomenon which provides the excess heat necessary to vaporized the water (3). Moreover, the bright portion of the cell contents does not represent the liquid water, but the foam. So, the lowering of the bright volume inside cell 2, that was highlighted by arrows in some video frames, does not indicate the decreasing of the liquid volume but that of the residual foam. This means that the largest part of the water had escaped the cell well before the start of that clip;

B – most part of water leaves the cell well before the short drying period indicated by F&P, and the first video clip shows the real mechanism by which this happens. In fact, the lower third of the unsilvered portion of the cell is still filled with liquid water, but the upper part is full of foam up to the limit of the silvered portion. So we can argue that, behind the silver layer, the foam reaches the cell plug and that its liquid part is entrained by the gas stream which flows through the vent pipe, and this liquid outflow can last for many hours.

This interpretation removes any need to suppose the existence of an arcane nuclear phenomenon, required to explain the wrong assumption of F&P that all the water contents of the cell vaporized in a short period of time and left the cell as dry steam.

In their ICCF3 paper (1), F&P discussed the problem of properly timing the variation of the water contents inside the cell:

"… It is therefore necessary to develop independent means of monitoring the progressive evaporation/boiling of the D2O. The simplest procedure is to make time-lapse video recordings of the operation of the cellswhich can be synchronised with the temperature-time and cell potential-time data. Figs 6A-D give the records of the operation of four such cells which are illustrated by four stills taken from the video recordings, Fig 10A-D. …

As it is possible to repeatedly reverse and run forward the video recordings at any stage of operation, it also becomes possible to make reasonably accurate estimates of the cell contents. We have chosen to time the evaporation/boiling of the last half of the D2O in cells of this type and this allows us to make particularly simple thermal balances for the operation in the region of the boiling point. …"

[bold added]

So F&P affirmed that they intended to sinchronize the temperature time diagrams with the video recording and repeatedly run the video in order to accurately estimates the water contents. However, from a simple comparison with some time frames extracted from the YouTube video (2), we can see that they incredibly reported a wrong interpretation of the time evolution of the water contents inside the cell.

The following jpeg shows the evolution of the water content inside the cell 2. The frame sequence allows to easily recognize and locate the upper level of the liquid remained inside the cell. It shows that the loss of water mass happened well before what F&P said.

The following jpeg expands the time period around the boil-off of the cell 2 of Figure 6B (1).

The already cited YouTube video (2) contains a short sequence starting at 22:35:14 (on the 20th test day, ie t = 1636514 s) that shows the behavior of cell 2 during the boil-off phase. The timeline on the expanded diagram indicates that the corresponding cell voltage has reached about 30 V after a few hours of continuous increasing. The simultaneous dropping of the liquid water level to about ¼ of the initial height suggests that the corresponding reduction of the surface of the anodic wire submerged by liquid water is the main cause of this progressively accelerated increase in voltage. It continues with the same trend up to point B, where the curve suddenly starts to rise much faster until it reaches in C the maximum allowable value of 100 V. The simplest explanation of this sudden acceleration is that in B the liquid level is dropped at the top level of the cathode. Since then, a further drop in the liquid level leaves unwetted an increasing portion of the cathode surface, provoking the sharp rise of voltage.

This simple interpretation of the experimental time-voltage curve implies that most of the water has left the electrolytic cell 2 at time B, long before the time assumed by F&P in their paper (1), that is around the peak voltage in C. Without considering that the arrows in the frame D and E of the video (2) place this dry-out period even later.

The jpegs presented in the previous comments show how easy it is to distinguish the liquid part of the cell contents from the accumulated foam above it and how the boil-off period consists of a first stage of lowering the liquid level followed by a second phase in which only the above foam is reduced. The first phase lasts for a few hours and involves most of the electrolyte content of the cell. The second phase lasts much less and entails a small variation in the residual mass content of the cell. However, F&P relied on the timing of this second phase to estimate that the last half of the initial water mass had evaporated in just about 11 minutes (1).

One wonders if F&P realized the real behavior of the cells in the first boil-off phase. The answer to this question is positive and is provided by a short video (2) that shows a part of Pons' presentation to the ICCF3, while on the screen a piece of the experimental video is projected showing the 4 cells under testing. This video sequence refers to the boil-off of Cell 1 and allows to follow almost entirely the lowering of the water level in the cell, starting from about ¼ of the initial level, until the complete disappearance of the water.

The following jpeg compares the frames taken from the video of this Pons presentation, with those of the short experimental video examined in the previous comments, here called for semplicity "Short test video" (3).

It is evident that the blue arrows superimposed on the frames of the "Short test video" don't indicate the decrease in the mass of water in Cell 1, but only the lowering of the residual foam. Is it possible that F&P didn't realize this obvious fact that they could have observed in hundreds of tests performed during many years with similar cells and that Pons had before his eyes during his presentation in Nagoya? In this regard it would be interesting to know what Pons says while presenting those images. Unfortunately, the superimposed Japanese translation prevents from understanding them. Is there anyone able to understand and transcript them down here?

To complete the panorama of the publicly available videos documenting the boil-off of Cell 1, we can cite the short clip included in the "Good Morning America" program broadcasted on May 1994 (4). They go from 22:13:58 to 22:28:58 and therefore they refer to the last part of the period shown in the "Short test video". The words during that clip are: "but, as this lab video shows, the devices [can do (?)] boil over and dry out after just a short while". I think that the images were provided by F&P and the text agreed with them.

It remains to understand what is the source of the "Short test video" posted by Krivit in 2009 and who superimposed the blue arrows and the scripts on its frames. Does anyone know if it is a video originally prepared by F&P themselves?

The previous comments discuss the evolution of the water content within Cells 1 and 2 of the test described in the F&P paper presented at ICCF3 (1). As for the remaining Cells 3 and 4, it is worth noting a strange misattribution of a small sequence included in the "Short test video" (2), as shown in the following jpeg.

On the frame labeled with F (at t=2m02s of the video, daily time 5:05:04), a blue arrow appears at the bottom of Cell 3, as indicating the conclusion of the boil-off phase of this cell. The previous video clip ended with a frame (close to frame E) timed 4:03:04 and marked with a blue arrow placed at 1/3 of the cell height. However, in these two frames E and F, Cell 4 appears very differently: in the first, it is almost completely transparent as it was at the beginning of the test, while, in the second, it appears almost completely bright, due to the foam accumulated in the upper part, and to the bubbles rising in the lower part, where the transparency only remain at sides of these bubbles. It is impossible that such an evolution has occurred in just one hour.

It just happened that the frame F was given a wrong interpretation. It actually refers to the boil-off phase of Cell 4 and occurs about 5 and half hours before the first frame G of the subsequent video clip starting at 10:35:04 and whose first frame is marked with a blue arrow placed in the upper third of the cell. So, it could have taken about 5 hours to boil away the residual liquid water which was still present at time F, a quantity that can hardly reach one third of the initial mass. To know how long it took to boil away the entire initial water content, it would need to have some more frames between E and F, in particular some showing the foam appearing below the lower level of the upper silver layer.

The wrong attribution of a frame sequence raises again the issue of the authors of that "Short test video", whose title announces:

1992 Four-Cell Boil-Off

by Fleischmann and Pons

Produced by Steven B. Krivit

New Energy Times

2009

So, who did choose the sequences in the video and placed the arrows and the scripts on the selected frames? Did Krivit only published a video that was already circulating among the CF community?

Does anyone has a more complete version of the recorded video showing the instant in which the foam begin to build up on top of the liquid water?

As known, the estimate of the heat output of the electrolytic cells in the tests described in the paper presented by F&P to ICCF3 (1) is based on the rate of decreasing of the water content during the boil-off phase. However, the authors affirm that the initial electrolyte content, quantified in the paper in 5 moles of (heavy) water, remains unchanged, thanks to the daily refills, until just before the final phase, which, according to them, would last less than an hour (10-11 minutes for the complete evaporation of the last half of liquid water).

The video images (2) discussed in the previous comments show instead that many hours before this final phase the upper part of the four cells appears bright, a sign of the presence of many gas bubbles. These gas bubbles may be those that rise from the bottom of the cell in which they are generated by vaporization of water, or be part of the foam layer that forms above the liquid. In any case, their volume subtracts space from the liquid phase and therefore the mass of water present in the cell substantially decreases well sooner than estimated by F&P.

To get a qualitative idea of how much volume is occupied by the gaseous phase, it is useful to estimate the production of gaseous volume in function of the electric power dissipated in the electrolyte.

The previous jpeg shows that for every 10 W of power available for vaporizing of water, 6.25 cm3 of steam are generated in each second, a volume equivalent to a layer of 1.25 cm of the cell, considering that its free cross-section is approximately 5 cm2. This vapor reduces the area of the electrodes (especially of the cathode) in contact with the electrolyte, so the galvanostat must increase the cell voltage in order to keep constant the current at 0.5 A. This produces a further increase in the vaporization, and this positive feedback continues until the maximum allowable voltage, set at 100 V, is reached.

At the maximum total power of 50 W, about 40 W are available for evaporation and a steam volume equivalent to a 5 cm layer is generated every second. This steam must go up quickly along the cell and cross the upper plug along the vent, whose area is a fraction (1/10, 1/20, ... ?) of the cross section of the cell. The consequent acceleration intensify the entrainment of water in the outlet gas stream.

As a final observation, it is worth noting that the transient of Cell 3, chosen to illustrate the increase in cell voltage, has the peculiaruty of a long period of time, estimated over several hours, where the voltage seems to oscillate between 50 and 100 V. If the numerical values of the measurements made during the test were still available, it would be interesting to verify the actual presence of these oscillations and understand the cause.